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Hewson
Hewson
Au-Ag-Te-Se deposits
IGCP Project 486, 2005 Field Workshop, Kiten, Bulgaria, 14-19 September 2005
Introduction
Significant deposits of gold and silver have
been exploited in the past from the contact
zones of intrusive maar-diatreme complexes at
Rosia Montana and Rodu-Frasin, but these
deposits are often overlooked due to their
proximity to the larger and more conspicuous
deposits hosted within the porphyritic dacite
intrusives at the core of these maar-diatreme
complexes. The Tarina prospect (including the
Igre, Jig and North Orlea zones) is located on
the northern periphery of the Rosia Montana
intrusive maar-diatreme complex, close or
coincident to the contact with the surrounding
Cretaceous sedimentary sequence. Rosia
Montana is a world class epithermal gold
deposit with current resources of 16.1 M oz of
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broadly similar in their geological and metallogenic environment, there are a number of
characteristics that differ between them.
Geological setting
Both the Tarina and Rodu deposits are located
on the periphery of intrusive maar-diatreme
complexes of Neogene age that have porphyritic dacite intrusives at their core (Leary et al.,
2004a, b). At Rosia Montana the principal
dacite bodies are the Cetate and Cirnic
massives, whereas at Rodu Frasin it is Frasin
Hill that it is composed of dacite. In both cases
the greater proportion of the gold mineralisation is hosted within these dacite bodies.
Both intrusive complexes are located on dilational sites associated with a regional scale
fault system that has a northwesterly trend and
hosts numerous phases of igneous activity.
This structure been interpreted as a splay from
the regional scale right-lateral strike-slip Zlatna
fault, which passes to the south of area (Nash,
2004; OConnor et al., 2004).
Geologically, the most obvious similarity
between the Tarina and Rodu epithermal gold
deposits is that they are both close or
coincident to the contact between the
tuffaceous vent breccia that fill large volumes
of maar-diatreme complexes, and the surrounding Cretaceous sedimentary sequence, and are
therefore distal to the core of these phreatomagmatic complexes.
Prospect geology
Both the Rosia Montana and Rodu-Frasin
maar-diatreme complexes have been intruded
into the same extensive package of Cretaceous
sediments that is dominated by finely bedded
shale with lesser fine to coarse-grained
sandstone and occasional conglomerate beds
and minor limestone. 40Ar/39Ar radiometric
dates on neoformed, hydrothermal vein
adularia from a quartz-adularia-pyrite vein in
dacite from the Cetate pit at Rosia Montana
yield ages of 12.78 0.09 and 12.71 0.13
Ma, which are regarded as a mineralisation age
for the system (Manske et al., 2004).
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Structure
The dominant structural features at Tarina are a
series of NW to NNW-trending faults
associated with the maar-diatreme bounding
structure and a number of major faults that
cross-cut the intrusive complex with northerly
and north-northeasterly trends (Hewson, 2003).
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Fig. 3. Geology and structure of the Rodu prospect (projected on to the 700RL)
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Mineralisation
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Resources
The latest resource calculation for Tarina has
identified 41.5 Mt at 1.14 g/t Au and 3.9g/t Ag,
using a 0.6 g/t Au cut off, for a total of 1.52 M
oz of gold and 5.59 M oz of silver. This is
relatively small compared to the total resource
for Rosia Montana of 400 Mt at 1.26 g/t Au
and 5.8 g/t Ag (for total amounts of contained
Au and Ag of 16.1 and 73 M oz, respectively;
Gossage et al., 2003). At Rodu a recent resource
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Conclusion
References
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Technical Memorandum.
Nash, C. 2004. Photogeological interpretation of
Rosia Montana-Bucium area, Romania. Unpubl.
RMGC Company Report.
OConnor, G.V., Nash, C.R., Szentesy, C. 2004. The
structural setting of the Rosia Montana gold
deposit, Romania. SEGR Symposium, Alba Iulia.
Rosu, E., Pecskay, Z., Stefan, A., Popescu, G.,
Panaiotu, C., Panaiotu, C.E. 1997. The evolution of the Neogene volcanism in the Apuseni
Mountains (Romania): Constraints from new KAr data. Geologica Carpathica 48, 353-359.
Verbeek, J. 2005. Revised resource estimate for the
Rodu and Frasin prospects. Unpubl. Company
Report prepared by RSG Global on behalf of
RMGC S.A.
Wallier, S., Rey, R., Kouzmanov, K, Pettke, T.,
Heinrich, C.A., Leary S., OConnor, G., Tamas,
C., Vennemann, T., Ullrich T. 2005. Magmatic
fluids in the breccia-hosted epithermal Au-Ag
deposit of Rosia Montana (Romania). Economic
Geology (submitted).
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